One of Gov. John Hickenlooper‘s appealing traits is his apparent conviction that people tend to be reasonable if given the facts. We’ll see if he’s right to feel this way in the case of hydraulic fracturing for oil and natural gas, but I very much doubt it.

Hickenlooper recently gave marching orders to the Colorado
Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to develop rules requiring disclosure of chemicals used in fracking – a source of bitter controversy between the industry and fracking opponents in recent years.

“Everyone in this room understands that hydraulic fracturing
doesn’t connect to groundwater, that it’s almost inconceivable that
groundwater will be contaminated,” Hickenlooper told the Colorado
Oil & Gas Association earlier this week. “But the industry needs to be transparent. It needs to demonstrate, beyond a doubt, that this doesn’t happen.”

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

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